“The road seems to be pretty good farther on,” announced our hero, after an examination. “But I’m afraid we’ll have to get somebody with a team of horses or oxen to pull us out of that hole. The car will never do it under its own power.”
They walked on, and presently came in sight of a farm nestling in a small valley beyond the hill. They walked up to this, and found a farmer in the barnyard, cleaning the mud from one of his horses.
“Well, gentlemen, what can I do for you?” hailed the man, as they walked up.
“I guess we got here just in time,” returned Dave. “There’s no use in finishing that cleaning until you’ve done a little job for us.”
“Eh? What’s that?” demanded the farmer curiously.
The chums explained the situation, and the farmer, whose name was Rawson, readily agreed to take two of his horses and the necessary tackle and assist them in getting the automobile out of the mud. In less than ten minutes the three were on their way to where the car was stalled. Mr. Rawson went to work quickly and with a precision that showed he knew exactly what he was doing.
“As soon as I give the word, you turn on your power and throw her into low gear,” he said. “I think we’ll have you out of this in a jiffy.”
And so it proved, the car coming up from the mud by the combined power of itself and the horses with hardly an effort. Then the team was unhooked, and Dave ran the car along the highway to where the farmer said farther traveling would be perfectly safe.
“By the way, we are on a rather peculiar errand around here,” said Dave, after he had settled for the farmer’s services. “May I ask if you have seen any gypsies in this vicinity during the last couple of weeks?”
“I don’t know about their being gypsies,” answered Mr. Rawson. “I had some trouble with a couple of tramps who robbed my chicken-coop about ten days or two weeks ago. I found they had been camping out in one of our sheds down in the woods. They wore bandana neckerchiefs and bright-colored vests.”